53 WSCHODNI ROCZNIK HUMANISTYCZNY TOM XVI (2019), No 1 s. 53-65 doi: 10.36121/dstasi.16.2019.1.053 Daniele Stasi (University of Rzeszów, University of Foggia) ORCID 0000-0002-4730-5958 Marxism and bourgeois democracy. Reflections on a debate after the Second World War in Italy Annotation: In this paper is illustrated a debate about the form of State and democracy be- tween N.Bobbio, some Italian Marxist philosophers and intellectuals. The debate took place in 1970s, that is in a period of intense philosophical confrontation, hosted by cultural reviews like „Mondoperaio” and marked by a strong ideological opposition linked to the world bipo- lar system. The paper presents the general lines of that debate, which highlighted the inad- equacies of the Marxist doctrine of State, consistently determining the end of any hegemonic ambitions in the Italian culture of those intellectuals linked to international communism. Keywords: Marxism, democracy, State, Italian philosophy, hegemony, Norberto Bobbio. Marksizm i burżuazyjna demokracja. Refleksje na temat debaty po drugiej wojnie świa- towej we Włoszech Streszczenie: W artykule przedstawiono debatę o kształcie państwa i demokracji, która toczyła się pomiędzy N. Bobbio i niektórymi marksistowskimi filozofami włoskimi w la- tach siedemdziesiątych XX wieku. Okres ten cechuje intensywna konfrontacja filozoficznа we Włoszech związana z sytuacją polityczną na świecie. Debata miała miejsce na łamach czasopisma „Mondoperaio”. W artykule zostały zilustrowane podstawowe tezy owej deba- ty, które podkreślają niedostatki marksistowskiej doktryny o państwie, konsekwentnie wy- znaczając koniec wszelkich hegemonicznych ambicji włoskich intelektualistów związanych z międzynarodowym komunizmem. Słowa kluczowe: marksizm, demokracja, państwo, filozofia włoska, hegemonia, Norberto Bobbio. Марксизм и буржуазная демократия. Размышления о дискуссии после Второй мировой войны в Италии Аннотация: В этой статье представлено дискуссии о форме государства и демократии, в том числе между Н. Боббио и некоторыми марксистскими философами итальянскими, 54 Daniele Stasi в 70-е гг. XX века. Этот период характеризует усиленная философская конфронтация связанная с политической обстановкой в мире. Дискуссии имели место посредством статей в журнале „Mondoperaio”. В нынешней статьи указано основные тезисы этих дискуссий, которые подчеркивают недостатки марксистской доктрины о государстве, последовательно отмечая конец всех гегемонистских амбиций итальянских интеллек- туалов, связанных с международным коммунизмом Ключевые слова: марксизм, демократия, государство, итальянская философия, геге- мония, Норберто Боббио. 1. The two-party system and the hegemony of Marxism To understand the importance of a controversy on the paradoxes of democracy and the inadequacies of Marxism in Italy at the end of the last century, it is necessary to describe the historical frameworks that is its background, and the motives, not only exclusively theoretical but also political, that had characterized the development and the affirmation of Marxism in Italy. The controversy, which had found a place mostly in the columns of the review ”Mondoperaio”1 in the late seventies, was around topics such as ”the democratic rules of the game”; the function of intellectuals; the role of parties and the relevance of Marxian elaborations within a liberal-democratic system. The controversy has developed in a context of profound social transformation, towards which Marxism seemed to be a cultural current in crisis in regard to the problems of the State and, more generally, relative to the organization of law in an advanced capitalist society2. The end of the second world war marked in Italy the emergence of the supremacy of the party of Catholics gathered, with the support of hierarchical Vatican spheres, around an innovative political program inspired by the social doctrine of the Church and political thought of the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo3, who urged an administrative decentralization and a limitation of the powers of the State towards the spontaneous organization of society. The Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana-DC) became the party around which the government coalitions rotate since the proclamation of the republic until the beginning of the 1990s. The substantial monopoly in the direction of the State by the Christian Democrats marks the progressive marginalization from the area of government of the parties which referred to the Marxist doctrine. Although the end of the war had been characterized by the substantial collaboration of all parties, Christian Democracy, and the post-war Catholic culture in general, were characterized by a hard anti-communism and a clear choice in the international field in favour of the United States. A very large gap was 1 The review was founded in 1948 by the socialist leader Pietro Nenni in memory of the glorious Spanish antifascist review „Mondo Obrero” and still existing, stands out towards the end of the Seven- ties of the twentieth century for its cultural vivacity. F. Coen, P. Bortioni, Le cassandre di Mondoperaio, Venice Marsilio, 1999. 2 M. Gervasoni, Le insidie della „modernizzazione”. „Mondoperaio”, la cultura socialista e la tentazione della „seconda repubblica” (1973-1982), in L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni settanta. Sistema politico e istituzioni. Edited by G. De Rosa and G. Monina, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino 2003, ss.203-234. 3 F. Felice, Il contributo di Luigi Sturzo alle scienze sociali, in L’opera di Luigi Sturzo nelle scienze sociali, edit by F. Felice, Torino Effatà, 2006, ss.7-34. Marxism and bourgeois democracy 55 created in the Italian political system4. On the one hand, the Christian Democracy as the ,,government party” which was managing, together with its ,,satellite parties”, public policies in a sense that safeguarded private property and the market economy; on the other, the Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano-PCI), which declared itself the promoter of ,,progressive democracy”, that is an Italian way to socialism, based on democracy and that excluded the conquest of power by revolution. On the one hand, therefore, a ,,state party”(DC), linked to the Atlantic pact and, on the other, a party (PCI) inspired by the works of Antonio Gramsci and actively involved to acquire a hegemonic role among the intellectuals in the field of culture, although unlikely in relation to the Yalta agreements, conquest of power. Government and opposition indicated not only different constitutional roles, but also the boundaries of a clash that transcended the parliamentary aspect and was connected to powers, international agreements and opposing visions of the world. The split between DC and PCI deeply penetrated Italian society. The party of Catholics, despite the support that came from the Vatican, had to consider the cultural initiative of the communist party, that is of a party able to exert a remarkable fascination upon various intellectuals, cultural reviews and foundations, magazines, publishing houses, etc. A fascination derived primarily from the international prestige of one country, which more than any other had contributed to annihilating the ,,Nazi Beast”: the Soviet Union. Marxism from a „neglected philosophy”5 as it had been in Italy until the Second World War, became, consistently in agreement with the thought of Antonio Gramsci, the cultural instrument of a party that criticizing the state of existing things tended to transform them. The influence of Marxism in Italy in the second post-war period has therefore an essentially political cause: the role of opposition, of ,,criticism of the existent”, that an antagonistic culture exercised towards a representative party firmly in power for decades. The imperfect bipartisanship (il bipartitismo imperfetto)6 i.e. the inability of the opposition culture to become a culture of government and to conquests power, characterizes the phase of a political system’s stabilization after fascism. What was missing in a system of this type was the alternation between majority and opposition typical of mature democracies. In this context, Marxist culture, especially from the point of view of political elaboration, increasingly became a „culture of protest” that had no possibility to perform its program. A the same time, the party of Catholics somehow betrayed Don Sturzo’s political program regarding the decentralization of State powers and the separation between civil society and central administration. The State and the party that represented it to the highest degree, became increasingly an ,,invader” of public policies in the field of economics, in the organization of relations between private individuals, in the organs of formation of public opinion such as the mass -media. The date that marks the crisis of the ,,paradigm of the division of power” between government and opposition (DC-PCI), between Marxist culture and Catholic culture has to be found in a precise historical period, that is in the second part of the 1970s. The structural causes are essentially linked to the change in Italian society from an economic 4 F. Bonini, Storia costituzionale della repubblica, Roma Carocci, 2008, ss.15-29 5 G. Bedeschi, La parabola del marxismo in Italia 1945-1983, Bari Laterza, 1983, ss.33-40. 6 G. Galli,Il bibartitismo imperfetto, Bologna Il Mulino, 1967. 56 Daniele Stasi point of view. The level of welfare achieved following the impetuous development of the 1960s thanks to redistribution policies gave way to a society in which unemployment